


HIST 4720: Polar Legacies

by Ias



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Mistaken for Being in a Relationship, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Professors, francis my lad he asked to co teach a class with you. it's not in a friend way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 04:14:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14866401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: Somewhere along the way, Francis realized that beneath the preening and insufferable attitude, James Fitzjames was an intelligent, capable, insightful man—with a passion for his historical field that Francis couldn’t help but admire, and rise to in kind.





	HIST 4720: Polar Legacies

**Author's Note:**

> Well, evidently I'm through with even the faint pretension of keeping it classy. But every fandom needs a college au, right? I present this with only a modicum of shame. 
> 
> My eternal thanks as always to my dear friend and perpetual tormentor [Kyra,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/masterofallimagination) for putting equal work into fleshing out this au and then providing a title I could steal word for word. I might be tempted in the future to write out a couple more vignettes in this universe; so if you're interested, keep an eye out!

The hour is late—a fact which Francis only realizes when he hears the familiar squeaky wheels of the janitor’s cart trundling past his office door. James has taken no notice; he sits in the wing-back chair on the other side of Francis’s office, leafing through the copy of Amundsen’s autobiography in his lap. The chair James is occupying takes up a good deal of the floor space, but though the college administration might have stuffed Francis into an office as spacious and airy as the dark hold of a ship, he stubbornly refuses to decorate it like one.

Besides, the chair is being put to good use. James flips another page, frowning as he reads; unaware also of Francis’s scrutiny. His tweed blazer is tossed haphazardly over the back of the chair, and at some point in the past few hours he rolled up the sleeves of his white button-down to the elbows. The number of times James has distractedly run his fingers through his hair has given Francis a new and entirely unwelcome definition of ‘artful dishevelment.” It’s really not fair at all that James’s appearance somehow manages to _improve_ over the course of a late night’s lesson planning. Francis generally just ends up looking like a man having an allergic reaction to shellfish right after being mugged. 

In fact, their late night work session is bordering on early morning. Likely Francis ought to point out the fact that all their respectable colleagues have long since gone home; James, after all, is still at the point in his career when he still gives a damn what the rest of the department thinks of him. The man has even managed to scrape up what appeared to be genuine loyalty for Dean Franklin, whose most recent act of incompetence involved doing an interview for a history channel documentary that turned out to be about an alien ziggurat in Antarctica. The publicity of which, James had pointed out, had caused a noticeable bump in admissions the next year; though Francis had quickly shot back that at least half the new applicants were conspiracy theorists.  

Hard to believe that not so long ago Francis had found James utterly insufferable. Or, well. Not so hard to believe at all, actually, given the number of times James monopolized the classroom fifteen minutes into Francis’s time slot, telling self-aggrandizing stories about his years volunteering abroad in humanitarian aid. Their increasingly snippy arguments about who had the right to occupy the lecture hall had turned into heated debates about their respective 19th century subject matter; and then James had stayed after his class to sit in the back row and lob Francis questions throughout the lecture, all the more irritating for the fact that the questions were _good_.

It was all downhill from there. The game of passive-aggressively trying each other boundaries had led to begrudging respect. And when the semester ended and the prospect of bickering with James before and throughout his class with it, Francis had already started drinking heavily for reasons he would not acknowledge to himself when James called his personal number to propose they co-teach a class. Somewhere along the way Francis realized that beneath the preening and insufferable attitude, James Fitzjames was an intelligent, capable, insightful man—with a passion for his historical field that Francis couldn’t help but admire, and rise to in kind.

More surprising than their history of animosity, then, is how dramatically Francis’s feelings have reversed themselves by now. A fact which he had been perfectly content—or at least, resigned—for James never to know.

But if the encounter Francis had endured earlier that very afternoon is any indication, his efforts of concealment have not been nearly as effective as he’d thought.  

That memory is at the forefront of Francis’s mind when his inadvertent staring does what the noisy clanking of the janitor’s cart could not: it draws James’s attention. He glances up, his eyebrows rising with a quirk of his lips when he finds Francis’s gaze already on him. “Something on your mind?”

It’s a damnable cliché, but when Francis finds James holding his gaze he finds himself immediately reaching for the very words he had so carefully meant to leave unsaid.

“Funny thing happened today,” he says before he can stop himself, and then immediately drops his gaze back to his book. There’s nothing in his tone or posture to suggest anything but nonchalance, except perhaps for the fact that _everything_ about his tone and posture suggest it.

As it is, James’s interest is immediate. “Don’t bury the lede, Francis. I can tell when you have something utterly fascinating to say.”

Francis shoots him a mildly reproachful gaze from beneath a single raised eyebrow. “You overestimate the kind of excitement I face on a day to day basis. It was just an incident with my TA.”

“Jopson?” James’s brow furrows, then. The book he had been holding in his lap folds shut, a finger between the pages to save his place. “I assume all is well.”

“Oh, yes, quite well. Couldn’t be happier with him.” Francis shifts in his seat, propping Shackleton up a little further against his knee as he pretends to peruse the next page. “No, it was a comment he made earlier, before heading home.”

Francis doesn’t look up at the creak of upholstery from across the room as James gets up. Doesn’t raise his head even as James makes his way across the claustrophobically small office to settle himself on the opposite edge of Francis’s desk, his wrist folded over his knee with his book still dangling precariously between his fingers. Except it strikes Francis that surreptitiously studying the position of James’s legs while he pretends to keep reading is in fact _less_ subtle than simply meeting his gaze, and so Francis looks up.

Perhaps that is a mistake. For James is leaning towards him, the low warm light of the lamp catching in the topography of James’s face, and by some strange alchemy making his brown eyes even _darker_ , gleaming with amusement even as they are.

“Francis,” he says slowly, “if you dissemble any further in telling me every last detail about the latest intrigue with your TA, I’m liable to track him down and ask him myself.”

Hard put to imagine a worse scenario than that, Francis musters a dismissive _hmmph_ in the back of his throat, and adjusts his hold on the book. Painfully aware of how James’s eyes follow the motion. “Your nose for drama is going to get you into trouble one of these days, you know.”

“It’ll be today, if you don’t speak up.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sakes.” Francis resists the urge to snap his book closed, but only barely. James’s grin widens once more. Under normal circumstances Francis would quite enjoy stringing James along like this, but not tonight. Not realizing, now that it’s far too late to turn back—that he should have kept his damn mouth shut rather than risk James’s smile becoming forced, a shield to hide his discomfort as Francis tells him exactly what it was Jopson said. Or worse, for him to laugh _too_ heartily. For the idea to be so utterly preposterous.

God, Francis could use a drink—that very thought makes his temples feel as if a vice has been tightened another turn. But it’s been two months and a day since he upended his last bottle of whiskey into his kitchen sink, and he doesn’t plan on backsliding for something as foolish as this.

He closes Shackleton slowly, and stands; his bookshelf is just behind his desk, but it gives him the excuse he needs to turn his back. “It seems,” he says, his voice falsely light as he slides the book back into its place on the shelf, “that our students have gotten it into their heads that the two of us are involved.”

A sudden laugh from behind him. Quickly cut short. “Involved?”

Francis’s fingertips wander over the spines of his books, brushing over cracked leather and the titles embossed in the bindings. “Romantically involved. Specifically, Jopson cornered me to say that he and the rest of the students wanted to convey their best wishes to us ‘working it out’ after my little sabbatical. Which they seem convinced was the result of some illicit lover’s spat.”

“And what did you say?” James’s voice is on the verge of breaking, into laughter or incredulity Francis cannot be sure.

Francis’s fingers settle on the book he’s been searching for—the memoir of Sir John Ross. He slides it free from the company of its brothers with a deft flick of his wrist before turning around at last. James is still perched on the edge of Francis’s desk, staring at Francis with an expression torn between bewilderment and something else. There’s no outpouring of mirth—just a fragile, teetering silence which somehow manages to be worse.

Francis looks away. He may be experienced in running himself aground on the shoals of another’s disaffection, but in this case he feels no need to watch his own hull shatter. “I told him that was a ridiculous notion. That I truly had been ill those weeks, which was not even technically a lie, and that you and I were certainly not engaged in some kind of illicit love-affair.”

“How utterly preposterous,” James says, his tone mild, and opens the book he’d been holding half-forgotten in his fingertips. “Students really do sniff out spectacle like truffle-pigs, don’t they?”

Francis cracks a smile. “You’re really one to talk, James.”

The laugh he earns in response is a relief; a sign that, thankfully, they can leave this awkward interlude behind. Except that Francis stops, his hand braced on the back of his hair as the fingers of his other hand drum the cover of Ross’s memoir as an unwelcome thought slips into the forefront of his mind. “Does the faculty think the same, you reckon?”

“It’s not against the bylaws.” James’s answer is almost instantaneous. His tone is neutral, and his gaze remains fixed on the book propped up on his knee, as if this topic is of so little import it hardly merits looking up. As if he is reluctant to meet Francis’s gaze.

“Ah,” Francis says. When he settles back into his chair and opens the book to a random page, the words run together before his eyes. He’s read it a dozen times, but right now it might as well be written in Icelandic. He pretends to be engrossed in it all the same. “I see. That’s—good, then.”

“Mm.”  

The silence drags on. Francis reads the same line of text over three times and cannot say for certain whether it concerns the demerits of eating seal meat or the specifics of arctic navigation. James, despite being a very quick reader, has yet to turn a page.  

“It was a nice thought, though, wasn’t it?” James says at last. “The students being concerned. Even if that concern was misplaced.”

Francis scoffs in spite of himself. “Yes, I suppose it was. Though I admit I preferred the days when I could only _speculate_ as to what the student gossip surrounding me was.”

“They’ll move on to new victims soon enough,” James says, at and last he closes his book. When Francis meets his gaze James looks away at almost exactly the same time. “Well, I suppose since we’re settled on covering Franklin instead of Ross, I’d best be out of your hair—”

“Now hang on one instant, we’ve settled no such thing,” Francis says incredulously, and they spend the remaining hour on the familiar ground of a pleasant argument, mutually pretending that the preceding conversation was of no import whatsoever.


End file.
